Security Shop Breach

Antivirus company Avast denies responsibility over the exposure of PayPal exposure and payment detail leaks after a security shop was breached. The rather aghast firm insists that the leakage and compromised security of thousands of clients wasn't their fault, but the fault of the German reseller. The irony is quite thick on their statement, even though the security shop was in fact selling security products (so the leak is the rough equivalent of robbers being able to get away with robbing a gun store). Thousands of customers and their payment details (from PayPal or otherwise) was leaked altogether last Saturday and Sunday (March 9 and 10).

The hacker who did it... Maxn3y, who's based in Turkey

Was able to deface and vandalize the Avadas website on March 9 before putting what was claimed to be customer details for the sake of leaking them to anyone who cared to look. The intentionally exposed info included configuration files that are incomplete found from the shop domain page of the Avadas site, the authentic admin login details for the site (that have long been changed after the defacement was undone over the weekend), and what security professionals think is the PayPal payment details of over 20,000 consumers. Understandably, Avast quickly distanced itself from the incident, stating that the German reseller is solely responsible for the leakage.

The data dump that was analyzed by other news organizations that covered the incident as it happened shows that the attackers also took hold of bank and payment info of the customers, their usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords, which shows that the online outlaws truly hit the payload with this digital heist and Information Superhighway robbery. The site was manned by Procello, which confessed that the customer database had been ultimately compromised and customer data had been outright stolen. However, Procello is unsure how many Avast customers were among those that had their information jeopardized by the hacking expedition of Maxn3y.

The company's German-language statement on the matter that's displayed on the website itself underplayed the possibility of fraud, stating that the passwords were safe thanks to encryption and minimum private information was actually stored on the site itself. It's unclear if it's just damage control on the PR's part of the firm or if there really is little to no worries to be had when it comes to identity thievery or fraudulent transactions using all that leaked information. Besides which, if the hackers were able to breach through website security, what more the encrypted password and whatnot? People have every right to feel concerned, especially if they've been victimized.